Criminal Litigation

Public inquiries

Representation of witnesses at public inquiries involves specialist skills and experience which few firms possess, and arguably none to the extent that we can supply.  Public Inquiries are invariably high profile, emotive, and conducted at speed.  Their procedures generally follow patterns that have been developed over a number of years.  They often involve the consideration of vast amounts of information requiring detailed analysis and sensitive representation.

It is vital that your lawyers are not learning their job while the inquiry is progressing.  You can have confidence that we will have the people and resources to enable us to represent your interests effectively from the moment that you instruct us, from liaising with the inquiry and assisting you to compile your evidence, through to helping you to prepare for the hearings and handle media enquiries.  Kingsley Napley is one of a very small number of firms with experience of handling public inquiries that is able to offer both civil and criminal litigation expertise in-house.

The team has a number of individuals with extensive experience of public inquiry work, including the Scott, BSE, Bloody Sunday, Marchioness, Sandline, Glidewell, and Hutton inquiries, and a number of private Government inquiries leading to published reports.  It also has experience of public investigations in areas as diverse as the House of Commons investigation into the Maxwell pension schemes and the Civil Aviation Authority's investigation into the hijack and crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 961.

In addition to public inquiry work, we advise on other quasi-criminal tribunals, such as the Health Professionals Council and we regularly represent members of the Chief Police Officers Staff Association.

Primary contact  Stephen Parkinson 

Notable public inquiry work

• Bloody Sunday
• Marchioness
• Hutton
• St James's Palace
• Sir John Stevens's Inquiry into alleged collusion in Northern Ireland
• Bichard
• Sandline
• Glidewell